Eva Wiese

Eva Wiese

Assistant Professor

Human Factors/Applied Cognition: Social Robotics and Embodied cognition in HCI

Eva Wiese is a cognitive psychologist interested in research on social neuroscience and embodied cognition and its application on Social Robotics and Design Thinking. She joined George Mason University in Fall 2013. Dr. Wiese holds a Masters Degree in Psychology from the Otto-Friedrich University of Bamberg, Germany and a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich, Germany. In her Ph.D. work, Eva Wiese investigated how context information modulates attentional orienting to gaze direction using behavioral measures, eye tracking and EEG. She also has minors in Physics and Applied Computer Science. Her Master Thesis was awarded with the Push-Prize for the best dissertation at the University of Bamberg in 2009.

Current Research

Social Robotics: Observable correlates of intentionality and the influence of mind attribution on social attention processes in Human-Robot Interaction

Dr. Wiese’ s interests focus on research in social attention and embodied cognition and its application to Social Robotics and Design Thinking. With regard to Social Robotics, the idea is to unravel what sort of information humans use when judging the degree of intentionality underlying the actions of social agents (i.e., robots) and how attributing a mind to others influences attention, perception and performance. With regard to Design Thinking, Dr. Wiese is interested in the role of embodied cognition involved in designing and in particular how perception and action processes interact during design thinking. In order to investigate these questions, Dr. Wiese uses behavioral measures, eye tracking and EEG.

Wiese, E., Wykowska, A., & Müller, H.J. (2014). What we observe is biased by what other people tell us: Beliefs about the reliability of gaze behavior modulate attentional orienting to gaze cues. PLoS One.